LSO/Gergiev

At the beginning of his second complete season in charge of the London Symphony Orchestra, could it be that Valery Gergiev is contemplating showing us his lighter side? Now he beams out of publicity photos, where last year his smile was surely superimposed on. And, instead of the warhorse symphony cycles he has helmed recently, here he brought us a whole evening of kaleidoscopic French repertoire – music for the mind's eye rather than merely the mind.

But Gergiev is not going soft, not a bit of it. For his players, this was a virtuoso orchestral showcase of relentless proportions. It seemed to have been meticulously rehearsed, with the instruments precisely blended and mercurially responsive to Gergiev's tweaks of tempo and mood. This was a characteristic LSO-at-the-Barbican sound: big, bold and glossy in the best sense.

The cross-currents in the first movement of Debussy's La Mer – long, smooth brass melodies over glancing string detail – culminated in a midday blaze that carried with it a real sense of arrival. And Ravel's complete ballet score for Daphnis and Chloé brought out the dancer in Gergiev; though things slackened slightly towards the middle, when the London Symphony Chorus made a brave go at the chromatic twists of their long, unaccompanied passage.

In between two works so concerned with the evocation of sunlight, the mysterious nocturnal soundworld of Henri Dutilleux's violin concerto L'Arbre des Songes – infused with fairytale instruments such as cimbalom and glockenspiel, but with nothing quite as one would expect – was especially beguiling. The 93-year-old composer was in the audience to hear Leonidas Kavakos bring the violin part alive, weaving its birdlike narration through the dark, enchanted canopy of the orchestra with a soulfulness that was absolutely compelling.